Month: January 2014

Freya woke early and lay for a while in the dark, feeling her city shiver and sway beneath her as its powerful engines sent it skimming across the ice.

Part two of the series that plays in a futuristic world with moving, cannibalistic cities. The review on the first book can be found here.

Philip Reeve blew me away with his world building the first time ’round, and didn’t disappoint this time. Instead of sticking to what the reader already knows, the world expands and new characters are added. The Magravine of Anchorage (a young woman who doesn’t know what to do with her half-empty city) is here, there are terrorists, bounty hunters and resistance movements.

It’s clear that humankind can’t go on like this, but a different way has yet to be found. Predator’s Gold is a novel to finish in one go, coming up for air after being bombarded with adventure, silly characters and teen emotions. It’s a thrill and I can’t wait for the third part.

The child, wide-legged on the ground, licked dust off his fist and tried to pretend he was tasting camel milk.

American librarian becomes part of a project to bring – by camel – books to Kenyan tribes. Some of the tribes-people like the act of reading and the new worlds that are opened to them, while others worry that tribe values will be replaced by written, fictional ones.

When two books aren’t returned to the book mobile (breaking one of the many rules surrounding the project), therefore risking the future of the book mobile – it’s clear that everyone, pro- and against, are influenced by what the book mobile brought and changed in their little village.

Masha Hamilton shows the small village as normal and the nearest big city as alien. It’s all in the eye of the beholder and what he or she is used to, after all. The main character realizes she is far from home, but doesn’t turn the strange into the wrong. All this comes together to create a fairy tale that is quite close to what any human experiences on a daily basis.

August goes to school for the first time when he’s ten years old. Before that he’s been home-schooled, sheltered from the world. Because August looks very different. His face especially isn’t like that of other children. He’d rather walk around with an astronaut’s helmet than show his face, but his parents think it’s time for school. So he goes.

Wonder lets August and different people around him share how the world looks when you are/have something looking different in it. In the beginning there are stares, names and discomfort, but later on the stories show that it’s more about the unusual and how everyone reacts to it, then it is about August, and who he is. He can’t help this, he is just another kid in an original body.

Things have to happen (of course) before August and his parents and his older sister all realize that school is school, no matter who attends it. Bad things happen, good things happen and it’s you and the people around you that make a difference. R.J. Palacio manages to drive the point home without adding Life Lessons and deep morals. Wonder is an easy read with characters that learn and develop themselves.

Reading a book about a Christian figure, while being atheist. Most of my arguments against this book are probably based on that. So many frustrations about a cruel God and the disinterest and cruelty of Noah. And yet, I think I liked it.

Probably because from time to time the Christian parts are backstory instead of front and center. Noah’s wife is a sad girl growing into a sad woman, viewed as a demon because of the mark on her face. She expects little from life, is loving and passive and doesn’t understand all Noah’s fuss. Sinners are still human after all, are they not? The author manages to show that with some of the characters, while others are clearly considered lost. There is no grey in this world, only black and white. Besides that, Rebecca Kanner does a nice job of world-building. It is hot and sandy and the nearby city is a hell-hole full of sin.

If you’re okay with knowing how a story ends before finishing it, and if you can ignore the extremely outdated ideas about sin, a woman’s place and a man’s rights ..you might as well enjoy this story. If those things make you see red before even opening the book – let it be.

Sinners and the Sea: The untold story of Noah’s wife, Rebecca Kanner, Howard Books 2013

Cutesy. This could be called fan fiction for everything Jane Austen wrote, but it doesn’t (after a while) feel like a cheap rip off. Main character is Jenny, a cousin of Jane. We follow her through her diary entries.

Just like in Austen’s stories, life in a certain society and commentary upon it, is what’s the meat of the novel. Parties and marriages (for love or for money), fantasies about adventures and a lot of men. Jenny wants to marry Captain Williams, but her older brother and sister-in-law (the very clear bad guy of this story) waylay her plans.

Jane Austen Stole My Boyfriend is colourful and shiny and feels like Jane Austen for (pre-)teens. A step up to start on one of the in the book mentioned stories by Austen.